Kennedy: Politics and children's health

Tuesday

Oct 30, 2007 at 12:01 AMOct 30, 2007 at 4:34 AM

On October 21, the House of Representatives listened to the American people and once again passed a Children's Health Insurance bill with a strong bipartisan majority. The Senate will act on that bill in the coming days and we will do the same. Once again, however, President Bush has threatened to veto the bill even though it would provide millions of children with quality health care and a healthy start in life.

Edward M. Kennedy

On October 21, the House of Representatives listened to the American people and once again passed a Children's Health Insurance bill with a strong bipartisan majority. The Senate will act on that bill in the coming days and we will do the same. Once again, however, President Bush has threatened to veto the bill even though it would provide millions of children with quality health care and a healthy start in life.

Health insurance of members of Congress, the president, and his advisors is not in doubt - 72 percent of it is paid by American's tax dollars.

But 9 million children in America, including 39,000 in Massachusetts, are uninsured. Most of these children come from hard-working families who are the nation's heart and soul, who pay their taxes and care for their children but who often lie awake at night worrying that they can't afford health insurance. The Children's Health Insurance Program - CHIP - was created for them.

CHIP is an American success story. In the decade since it was enacted, we have seen what it can do to transform young lives. The percentage of uninsured children has dropped from almost 23 percent in 1997 to 14 percent in 2005.

Children enrolled in CHIP do better academically, emotionally, physically and socially. It all but eliminates the distressing racial and ethnic health disparities for the minority children who disproportionately depend on it for their coverage.

That's why over 70 percent of Americans support the pending CHIP legislation.

But the president and his allies in Congress are determined to obstruct health care for these ten million children.

They've misrepresented the bill and the spirit of compromise that created it. They falsely claim the bill would cover children from families earning as much as $83,000 a year, even though no family at that income level is eligible for CHIP. In fact, according to the Congressional Research Service, 91 percent of children covered under CHIP are in families with incomes below 200 percent of the poverty level - $41,000 for a family of four - and almost all of the families above this level pay premiums to defray the cost of coverage.

In fact, the bill recently approved by the House goes further than current law, and makes it illegal to cover anyone in families making over $62,000 a year, or 300 percent of the poverty level.

CHIP began as a principled bipartisan compromise, and it remains so even now. Many of us have called for an adequately funded bill to meet the needs of all of the nation's children. But we accepted a smaller program in order to obtain broad bipartisan support.

But we will not compromise the future of a generation of American children just because they come from working families.

The time has come to stand up and be counted to see who is for children’s health and who is against it.

We need to know who is for families like the Lewis family in Springfield, Massachusetts. When I met Dedra Lewis and her daughter, Alexsiana, they talked to me about the difference CHIP makes in their lives. Alexsiana has a rare eye disease that requires expensive drops every hour of every day. To take care of her daughter, Dedra had to cut back on her hours at work, and lost her health insurance. Without CHIP, they would be choosing between keeping a roof over their heads and buying the medicine that Alexsiana needs to protect her eyesight. Families across America know of similar stories, and they clearly want Congress to renew and keep the promise of CHIP.

In a single month of the war in Iraq, we spend what's needed for CHIP to cover 10 million children for a year. A solid bipartisan majority in Congress agrees that children must have priority too. The coming days will determine whether that majority is large enough to override another shameful veto by the President and give the nation's children the healthy start in life they need and deserve.